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As a Windows user, my options for decent text editors to write my articles with are fairly limited. The majority of them are either best suited for coding or too greedy for system resources.

Lucky for me, Automattic, the maker of WordPress, has just launched its free text editor Simplenote on both Windows and Linux. The app has been around on numerous other platforms for some time now, and it’s a pleasure to finally be able to use it on my desktop.

As its name implies, Simplenote isn’t about bells and whistles. It syncs all your notes across devices, supports Markdown so you can easily format your text, allows you to tag your notes so they’re easy to find later and auto-saves your work.

Simplenote supports Markdown, syncs across platforms and is completely free

But that’s not all – you can even publish your notes to the Web straight from the app. If you’d rather keep it between yourself and a collaborator, you can simply email them and work on the document together.

The sparse interface only shows a toolbar, a list of your notes and space for you to write. You can switch between light and dark themes and adjust the font size. It’s perfectly minimal – save for the note list that I wish I could hide while working.

Over the past year, I’ve been partial to Write, a great little text editor with similar functionality that now has paid and free versions. However, Simplenote is quickly winning me over with its ability to quickly publish content and sync my notes to my Android and iOS devices at no charge.

It’s also worth noting that the Windows and Linux versions of Simplenote are open-source, which means you can tinker with the code and customize it to better suit your needs.

If you’ve been looking for a lightweight, elegant writing app for your desktop, Simplenote is certainly worth a try.